


Darling, Can't You Hear Me? (SOS)

by wonker8



Series: Don't Hurt Me [2]
Category: Avengers Movie-verse
Genre: Angst, M/M, orange allergies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-23
Updated: 2012-07-23
Packaged: 2017-11-11 23:37:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/484155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonker8/pseuds/wonker8
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>5 calls for help that everyone misunderstood. 1 call that changed everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Darling, Can't You Hear Me? (SOS)

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Español available: [Darling, Can't You Hear Me? (SOS)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5644708) by [MaldicionDeLuna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaldicionDeLuna/pseuds/MaldicionDeLuna)



1.  
The person who knocked on the lab door wasn’t Clint. It couldn’t be. Clint had a bad habit of sneaking into the lab and surprising Bruce; he hadn’t knocked on the lab doors since the first few awkward days of living together in the Stark Tower. And as soon as the thought of the archer entered Bruce’s mind, he shook his head and chided himself for being so silly. Of course it wasn’t Clint. Clint was currently away on a mission that was supposed to last for a few more days.

With that squared away, Bruce answered the lab door. Tony Stark stood there with a raised brow.

“Huh, I thought that was weird,” he said.

The doctor tilted his head in confusion. “What’s going on now?”

“Barton’s in the kitchen.”

Oh? So Clint was back? Well, indeed this was odd. Usually, when Clint returned early from a mission, he snuck into the lab and surprised Bruce with a big hug. Then, the archer would drag Bruce out of the lab for a date or something until Bruce realized that Clint was injured. Then the date would be cut short for a visit to some form of medical professional, especially since Bruce refused to treat any of Clint’s wound that wasn’t life-threatening.

“Is he hurt?” Bruce asked finally.

Tony was looking at him with a deep set frown, and the doctor couldn’t stop the worry that sprang up. “Well,” the billionaire said, “he’s sort of chugging down all of the orange juice, which may or may not be because he was brain-damaged in the latest mission.”

Bruce’s eyes widened in alarm and Tony continued his tale.

“It’s Natasha’s favorite brand. You know, the one that had to be specially imported from Russia? It takes them about three weeks to make and send it over, and I’m really not looking forward to Natasha finding out that her ojs are now gone and she won’t have any for three weeks.”

Bruce frowned, worry and disbelief settling deeply on his stomach. Clint was back from a mission and wasn’t bothering Bruce. Clint was willingly incurring Natasha’s wrath, despite the fact that he was always the one to make sure that the rest of the Avengers knew better than to. Clint was drinking orange juice, despite knowing that he was allergic to oranges. Just what had happened on the recent mission to shake the archer like that?

“I’ll go talk to him,” Bruce said finally.

Tony looked like he was going to add something else but then changed his mind. Instead, he gave Bruce a hesitant pat on the shoulder.

“Hey, if he ever hurts you…”

The phrase hung in the air awkwardly between them, but the doctor couldn’t help but to smile. “I know, Tony,” he said. “But we’re fine. There’s nothing wrong with our relationship and Clint’s not going to hurt me.”

Tony didn’t ask how Bruce knew. He just looked at the doctor with tight-set jaws. Bruce left.

2.  
Even before Bruce was anywhere near the kitchen, he knew that Natasha found her partner drinking all of her orange juice. He could hear the sounds of Clint yelling curses from where he was. His strides became quicker as he hurried. He walked in time to see Natasha throw Clint down to the ground and force antihistamine tablets down his throat. Bruce froze where he stood, hoping that the two wouldn’t notice him and at the same time, wondering how he was going to stop the two assassins.

“Explain,” Natasha said, her voice calm in a manner that left Bruce in awe of her emotional control.

Clint just shrugged. There were signs of vomit on his shirt and the ground. His eyes were puffy red and he was sniffling a little. From the way his skin was beginning to turn red, Bruce knew Clint’s skin was becoming itchy. “Was thirsty,” Clint declared.

She stared at him for few more seconds before muttering darkly in Russian. She helped her partner up and left the kitchen, briefly throwing an unreadable look at Bruce as she went. It was only then that Clint realized that he wasn’t alone in the room.

For the last few weeks, Bruce had come to expect a certain type of behavior from Clint. One of those was for him to grin widely whenever he spotted the doctor and come bouncing with energy. He got used to seeing the way Clint’s eyes light up whenever Bruce was nearby, as if Bruce was someone that Clint loved seeing. As if Clint was genuinely happy at the sight of Bruce.

Instead of the friendly welcome that Bruce had grown so accustomed to, Clint nodded to him and went to search the refrigerator for something else to drink (Bruce couldn’t help but to notice that it was never an alcoholic drink). Clint didn’t spare him a second glance or a smile. Clint’s eyes did not light up, and Clint most definitely did not come running towards Bruce like an overactive puppy. In fact, he was rubbing at his puffy red eyes, sniffing softly. It was probably the allergy, Bruce told himself.

“You don’t seem injured,” Bruce managed to say finally. Well, ‘not injured’ didn’t include the allergic symptoms for obvious reasons.

“Yup,” Clint said. He did not say anything more. Just took out the milk carton and began to drink from it.

“I don’t think Cap would appreciate you drinking it straight from the carton, Clint,” Bruce told him mildly.

The archer put the lid back on. “Probably not,” he agreed. He put the milk back in the fridge.

“Why didn’t you come down to the lab?” It wasn’t like that question was bugging Bruce or anything. It was just a good gateway into a discussion, especially at times like these when Clint didn’t feel like talking. They had moments like these before, and Bruce knew how to handle it.

Clint shrugged.

Bruce just needed to be patient, and he was nothing if not that. So he walked up to a stool nearby Clint and sat down. The archer stared back at him. This was something that Bruce learned early on. He never pushed Clint to talk, especially nothing that made the archer behave strangely. At times like these, he would just stand or sit next to Clint, let him know that Bruce was there at his side. And eventually, Clint would open up, even if that eventually took a few days or weeks.

This seemed to be one of those cases, because Clint shook his head and left the kitchen. Well, that was fine. Bruce could be patient.

3.  
Bruce awoke with a start, uncertain as to what caused him to jerk awake. He stared at the door, but the door remained closed shut. It made him frown. Every morning since Clint and Bruce began to go on dates, Clint had, without fail, knocked on the door every morning at 8 AM to invite Bruce to the team breakfast. Of course, by knocking, Bruce meant that Clint gave three sharp raps on the door with his knuckles and then barged into the room.

It was currently 8:10 AM, and there was no sign of the archer in the room.

Instead, someone knocked at the door again.

“Come in,” Bruce said as he groggily got out of bed.

Steve opened the door with politeness that was both refreshing and disturbing (it should be _Clint_ who stood in the doorway). He shuffled nervously on his feet before motioning towards upstairs, where the kitchen was.

“Uh… breakfast, you know?”

Bruce frowned. “Is Clint still sleeping?”

Steve shook his head. “He said he didn’t want breakfast and that we should wake you up for breakfast.”

The doctor nodded slowly, the frown still on his face. It was odd. Was Clint still upset about the mission? What could have happened for him to be this shaken? Clint never skipped breakfast. Hell, the archer was the reason why Bruce started to bother with breakfast! Why was he skipping it today?

“Where is he now?” Bruce asked.

“The range.”

Bruce nodded. “I’m going to talk to him. Save us breakfast, won’t you?”

The Captain frowned. He looked like he wanted to pat Bruce on the shoulder, but then refrained. Instead, he just settled his hands behind him. “If you ever need to talk-”

“I know, Steve,” Bruce answered his unasked question. “I know.”

He also knew that he would never take Steve on the offer.

4.  
“Clint?” Bruce called softly. His voice was overshadowed by the loud roars of gunshots. Bruce covered his ears, flinching at every shot and forcing his heart rate to slow.

The archer was standing in the range, a gun in hand. The usual bow and arrows weren’t anywhere near him. He was firing into the center of the bullseye, hitting the same spot over and over again. Well, his aim wasn’t off, which assured Bruce that things weren’t too bad. But the fact that Clint didn’t have his bow and arrows meant something was wrong.

Bruce waited silently for Clint to finish shooting before approaching him and tapping him on the shoulder.

“Clint,” he repeated when Clint pulled his earmuffs down. “You missed breakfast.”

Clint shrugged.

“And you’re using a gun.”

“Was bored.”

Well, at least Clint was talking now. Even if it was just two words, it was a good start.

“Did something happen during the mission?”

Clint shook his head. There wasn’t a single ounce of mischief in his eyes, so Bruce knew that this wasn’t some sort of a game.

“Then what aren’t you telling me?”

The archer looked away from Bruce, glaring at the single hole in the bullseye. His teeth gritted slowly and a deep rumble of a growl reverberated from the man’s chest. Bruce waited.

After a minute, Clint let out a soft sigh and slumped. “I’m sorry,” he said suddenly. “I just…” He rubbed the back of his neck slowly. “I wasn’t really thinking, I guess. I get it, you know. I get it.”

Bruce didn’t understand. What was Clint going on about now? Sighing softly, Bruce grabbed Clint’s chin gently and turned the archer’s face towards him.

“I’m not going to understand if you don’t talk to me,” Bruce told him gently. “So why don’t we go on a small date? Just the two of us, none of the Avengers looking over our shoulders? We can go to the café that you like so much.”

There was something in Clint’s eyes that Bruce had never seen before. It wasn’t anger, and it wasn’t fear. Then what was it? And why was Clint looking at him like that?

“Okay,” the archer said finally. “Let me just… change first. Meet you downstairs?”

Bruce nodded. Clint took that as his que to leave, his head hung low. It looked like a man walking to his execution, and it scared Bruce a little. Just what had happened for Clint to act like that? Just what was going on?

“Doctor Banner, if you require assistance, I can look up some couple counselors that you could potentially talk to,” JARVIS informed Bruce.

The doctor raised a brow. Counseling? Really? He shook his head. “It’s fine, JARVIS,” he said. “We’ll figure it out together.”

“If you say so, sir,” JARVIS replied. Bruce thought there was a hint of doubt in the AI’s voice, and he chuckled lowly to himself at the thought. JARVIS was an AI, which meant that he was a computer program, not human. Computers didn’t feel. Anything that Bruce thought he heard was just a fragment of his imagination.

He chose to not think about why his fragment of imagination would think that JARVIS would be doubtful.

5.  
Bruce shifted his weight from one foot to another, whistling softly. Clint always took long in the showers after working out at the range. It was one of the things that Clint warned the doctor when they first started dating. Bruce had shrugged it off then as nothing, and it would still be nothing if not for the fact that the doctor was beginning to feel a little nervous about the whole thing.

Usually, Clint took about thirty minutes to an hour, depending on his mood. It had been three hours since Bruce asked Clint to the date. He was beginning to wonder if he had been stood up.

He didn’t know what came over him. He didn’t know why he asked Clint for a date. It was always Clint that asked for dates. It was always Clint who cheered Bruce up. It was always Clint. And now here Bruce was, waiting to take Clint to his favorite café on a date in hopes of cheering him up. When did their roles flip?

It made him think back on the conversation that he had with Betty. And as soon as he thought about her, he stopped whistling and grimaced.

_“Betty, don’t you still love me? If you do, then we can run together. Keep hidden. Clint’s taught me bunch of tricks to stay out of SHIELD’s radar. And I’ve learned to control the Other Guy better. Please Betty, won’t you give me this chance?”_

_“Oh, don’t even start that with me, Bruce! We had to end. You know that. It had nothing to do with Hulk or my dad or the Hulk Busters or whoever was chasing you. I love you and you love me, but it’s just not the same. We love each other, yes, but we’re not_ in _love anymore. I have someone new now, and I thought you were doing so well with Clint.”_

_“This isn’t about him! This is about you and me!”_

_“There is no you and me! Not anymore!”_

_“But Betty-”_

_“No. No Bruce. You’re upset about something that I don’t know about . I don’t know why you’ve suddenly decide to call me with this ridiculous idea of leaving together, but I do know that nothing can come out of running away. Stop running and stand on your own two feet. And for god’s sake, Bruce, don’t hang onto the idea of being in love with me. We’ve been over for ages. You have Clint, and you’re doing very well with him. Don’t ruin what you have with him for an imagined ‘romance’ with me!”_

Was he doing well with Clint? He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore. He loved Betty. Loved her with all his heart. But Betty insisted that that wasn’t the same as being ‘in’ love with her, whatever that meant. And after all that was said and done, where did that leave Clint? What was the archer to Bruce if he wasn’t ‘in’ love with Betty?

“Bruce? Well this sure is a surprise. You’re usually in your lab,” Pepper commented as she walked by with SI papers in her hands.

“Hey Pepper,” Bruce said with a mild smile.

She looked him up and down, taking note of the clean purple shirt and jeans. “Date with Clint? Is he back from his mission already?”

Bruce nodded.

“I’m happy for you,” Pepper said with a bright smile. “You two look so happy together. I can’t imagine you without him by your side anymore.”

That startled the doctor. “We… look happy?”

She nodded absentmindedly as she flipped through some of the papers. “Very. I was jealous when I first found out, you know. Tony’s a little… well, I’m sure you know what Tony’s like.”

“Ye… yeah.”

But Bruce’s mind was reeling. He was happy with Clint? But he was happy when he was with Betty, wasn’t he? He and Betty were happy together, as long as others didn’t get in their way. Then what the hell was Clint? Sure, they went on dates and hung out, but there really wasn’t anything between them. Did that mean that Bruce was ‘in’ love with Clint? But that couldn’t be right because this wasn’t the feeling he got when he was with Betty. This wasn’t the love he felt when he had Betty.

Pepper stopped looking through the papers and gave Bruce her full attention. “Did something happen?” she asked, frowning. “I know I’m not around all the time, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about everyone.”

“We’re fine,” Bruce assured her, but it was his heart that wouldn’t accept the reassurance. “There’s nothing wrong at all.”

She gave him a look. The same look that she gave Tony when she knew that he did something wrong and wouldn’t admit to it. The same look that Bruce had seen her direct at Tony multiple times that caused Tony to break. Bruce didn’t blame Tony for breaking.

“Okay, he’s acting a little weird,” Bruce admitted. “Ever since he returned from the mission, actually.”

She frowned, suspicion quickly jumping to worry. “Is he okay? He’s not injured anywhere is he?”

Bruce shook his head. “I don’t think so. It’s just that he’s…” He trailed off when he realized that the archer was approaching the two of them, dressed in casual wear like Bruce was.

“Yeah, I know. Tony’s like that, too,” Pepper said, also noticing Clint. “Well you both go on this date and try to talk things out, okay? And if he does or says anything hurtful-”

“He’s not going to hurt me,” Bruce said. He smiled tightly.

Pepper nodded and waved goodbye. Bruce greeted Clint, who nodded back at him. The two made their way to the café quietly, giving enough time for Bruce to ponder once more just what Clint was to him. What were they to each other?

+1.  
They looked at each other awkwardly, neither knowing what to say. They were at the café, sitting across from one another. Bruce had a random chai drink in one hand, sipping it quietly. Clint had some sort of cappuccino in his hand that he wasn’t drinking.

“So…” Bruce said finally.

Clint stared blankly at him.

Bruce sighed. “Clint…”

“Do you love Betty?”

The question was so random and sudden that Bruce didn’t know for a second what to do. Then reality hit and Bruce said, “Of course,” without any more hesitation. “But why are you-”

“Then why did you say yes?”

“To what?”

“To me. When I asked you out. Why did you say yes when you love Betty?” Clint’s troubled gray eyes met Bruce’s confused brown.

“Well… I…”

“Be honest, please.”

Bruce gulped. “Honestly? I said yes because I thought it was code for SHIELD wanted to bring me in, and you didn’t want anyone else to know.”

Clint dropped his head in his hands and let out a soft laugh that sounded almost like he was choking. “Then why did you continue to go out with me? Why did you never mention that it was a misunderstanding? Why the hell did you let me delude myself after you found out that I was fucking _in love with you_?”

The doctor frowned. He looked at his chai, asking himself the same questions. Why did he? What had he been thinking? Surely he knew that this would be the result? Surely in his heart of hearts, he had told himself that this was a bad idea, that playing with other people’s emotions was a terrible thing to do?

“Because…” he paused to wet his lips, building courage in the small amount of time. “Because I loved it. There. I said it. I loved the way your eyes lit up when you looked at me. I loved the way you laughed at my dry jokes, the way your eyes crinkled and shone. I loved the way your attention was focused on me, as if I was the only person in the whole world that mattered. I loved the way you didn’t care to make me angry, the way you so easily stood up to the Other Guy. I just…”

He sighed. “I loved that you treated me like a human.”

Clint was looking at him now. Looking at him with those sharp eyes that seemed to be categorizing every movement that Bruce made. And suddenly, the whole thing made him angry. Just who did Clint think he was, demanding all these answers now? What was it to Clint anyways? Sure Bruce never expressively told Clint every truth, but it wasn’t like he hadn’t told Clint that he liked the guy either! Besides, who was Clint to talk anyways? It wasn’t like Bruce hadn’t heard of Clint’s previous relationships: how Clint left the ones that he supposedly loved in the dust, breaking their hearts as easily as he shot an arrow through a target’s eye.

“It’s not like you ever noticed before!” Bruce said, his voice bordering on shouting. “For someone called ‘Hawkeye,’ you sure as hell miss a lot! It never bugged you before, so why are you starting now? I’m giving you what you want, aren’t I? I’m letting you have my attention and time that could be spent on better things. Why the hell are you causing up a ruckus now?”

His breathing was hard, and he had to forcibly remind himself that this wasn’t right. That he couldn’t get angry in such a public place. Not when he could harm so many people. He clenched and unclenched his muscles, trying hard to relax.

“You’re right,” came the soft reply. “You’re fucking right. Shit. Shit…”

Bruce looked at Clint, surprised by the sudden change in the archer’s demeanor. What was this? Why was Clint agreeing with him? The archer was usually stubborn, always shouting and demanding. Then why did he give up so easily? So dejectedly? Bruce let out his breath, anger melting away to confusion and fear.

“Clint, what-”

“I’m sorry for wasting your time, Doctor.”

Clint stood up and walked away, leaving Bruce to wonder what had just happened.


End file.
